...what else can i say. a once in a lifetime thing for the band and us there. ok,yeah ,it was late and there was fatique...after smoking 20 gigantic spliffs of all kinds of local herb that every dread was hawking there,and even on acid we might have been kinda asleep on our feet...or was it an epic surreal dream....the jerks saying this show was poor are FOOOOOLS !!!!u werent there... like many shows, only portions really reach that special level...well,here, the scarlet/fire at dawn was pretty gosh darn sweet ,it was this majestic multi hued sky with clouds, it almost looked like rain i think,but it didnt,or did it,who knows.i do remember standing right in front of jerry ,it was loosely populated in front, and he hit some change in the tune and it kinda woke me up,startled ,even tho i was standing, and i think he noticed me and thought to himself"these fuckers are all asleep on there feet !!!" haahaha, still it was top ten GD experience shit .....and that was just a fragment of the whole cruising jamaica trip for the heads then,sooo many stories,awesomeness....and ,yeah, i went for the Dead but, Peter Tosh again, at sunrise with a fat rainbow two days later was 10x more AMAZIN...thats another story,mon irie ......

I went down to Jamaica with my buddy Chris. We'd been students at the St Croix marine bio lab in 1980 and tried to get others to come along. We got a campsite just around the bay from the field so even if you missed an act you could lay around and listen in the camground. It was fenced in with Jamaican army with rifles guarding the fenceline. We met this dude named Minto who became our personal guide and supplier. Soon we met Francis Ford Coppola's neice Lisa and she was cool and hung with us the rest of the time. So hot and sunny it was overwhelming. Good erb. Caught most of the shows and remember Clash, Squeeze and Gladys well. Of course we were there for the Dead alone. Remember Strummer telling us to get up and dance and he would bring on the GD. The actual Dead set was ho hum and we were all tired. But seeing the sun rise to the band was great. We reted mopeds and checked out the wider area. In one small bar I met this girl and she lived there in the Peace Corps. That chance meeting saw me join in 83 and go to Tonga from where I ended up in New Zealand til this day. So a turning point trip really. Didn't care that the band wasn't fully on that night. We were just enjoying everything. The mystery guest was a big question on everyone's mind and we all guessed Jagger or the Stones, but after much waiting turned out to be local reggae hero Yellow Man, who was awesome. There was all kind of fair on offer, anything you wanted so I assumed Jerry and the boys simply had too much of something. Great trip anyway. I recall almost going to Egypt too but I think I had to work. That woulda been cool.
Not gonna rate the songs or show as it was mediocre. Think we saw Joe Jackson play too.

There's a lot of mythology around this show, the first of which is that it was one of the worst-ever (mostly true) and that the set was played from 4am to 8am (also true - each day went sunset to sunrise) and that there was a charter flight/concert pass available through the Dead (true but pause and imagine that flight!). The festival has been heavily traded (particularly the Dead, Clash & B-52s) but the dates often get mislabeled because the headlining bands all played after midnight (the next day). The Dead played on the 26th AM (through sunrise), the 25th on the schedule. The show varies from average to terrible, but just below average overall - NOT the worst ever, but perhaps the worst show of '82. Though the Dead were never much of a festival band, having to play short, for non-fans, etc., this was just a couple months after the US Festival (one month after the one-off at the Santa Fe dirt track and one month before a NYE run at the Kaiser).

When I got this tape it was erroneously labeled "Reggae Sunsplash". At the time I so badly wanted to go to a Sunsplash and couldn't imagine the thrill of one featuring the Dead, Squeeze (billed as the last show of the iconic East Side Story line-up!), B-52s and "the only band that mattered", thinking it would be full of top weed and cool vibes (alas, a victim of media-cultural bias). I didn't know weed wasn't openly tolerated at the time and that after a few hours of ca-chunka-chunka...ca-chunka chunka...ca-chunka chunka, reggae is boring as shit. This was actually The World Music Festival and only partially reggae-based because it was a Barry Fey production (of Denver's Feyline) and featured bands he liked and invited, in a project he promised in return for hotel development in the country. Locals had free/cheap tix and non-islanders had to buy a separate pass to wear island-wide since the "Marley Arts Center" was actually a beach-adjacent, gravel-and-boulder field (no shit) with no fencing. Fey had brought both the Clash and the Dead to Red Rocks earlier in the year, getting them to sign-on for this, with the caveat that Bobby & the Midnites also perform. Fey also sold a video tie-in (aired locally) that's never surfaced, other than bits! It was held over Thanksgiving to tap the American vacation market (and not to collide with Sunsplash, held in the summer). Attendance from the USA was strong - even though the concept of a fly-in festival was mostly un-thunk at the time and though only those booking in advance could attend - and the idea was that Fey would continue the festival (there were similar festivals staged but none with the cachet of '82). Tix were pricey at $100 (~$250 today) in an era when shows were $10-15.

The Clash, who were imploding at the time and making last grasps, made the same deal they made with Wozniak (US Festival '83) - to headline the festival. One book says they ultimately let home-hero Tosh be the final act and 2500 made his set best-attended (and that in return he complained that forecasted rains didn't arrive to ruin the Clash set - though they were well-received locally according to Clash bios). But eyewitness accounts (and footage) say Tosh opened the festival, so he must have played twice. (Tosh>B52s>Gladys Knight>Dead the 1st day matches the official schedule, which has the Clash last day, plus Mick Jones says they sat in the audience to watch Knight and the Dead and ate "the local shrooms"). After Knight, the Dead spent 1 & 1/2 hours setting up. Funny that they would go on at 4am, and then, in wee-hour Jamaica, take off at such a wild tempo...

It's well-known that between Radio Clash and Clampdown, Strummer says, "By the way, if you don't like us, I got the Grateful Dead in the wings and I'm gonna bring 'em on. So you better shape up now". This has caused confusion because the Dead didn't follow the Clash (who played early-morning on the 28th), they followed Gladys Knight two days earlier (she complained about the napping heads with their tabs awaiting). Was Joe just teasing the crowd? Or was he thinking of Bobby who had played a few slots earlier? Bobby was knee-deep in his mom-rock Midnites project, in-between their two albums and at the end of their second tour, after Billy Cobham (Miles Davis) had taken the drum seat from the also-great Carmine Appice (Jeff Beck, Rod Stewart, etc.) They played another "Man Smart" and a "Book of Rules". BTW - Bobby Cochran was a hot guitarist on those tours and has written an interesting book about his uncle (Eddie Cochran).

The Dead show was avoided by some traders and sought by others as a curio, after being slammed in the Deadhead's Taping Compendium:
"This performance is a pathetic embarrassment...Sugaree, executed with each band member attempting a different tempo, nearly collapses at the end of each solo, and fails to manage more than a few seconds of consecutive continuity throughout...Though they manage to pull themselves together enough to make it through the following two songs with minimal miscues, none come even close to approaching average status...Althea>Let It Grow [concludes] what has to be among the band's poorest sets...the second set is lifeless, without highlights, permeated by a distant and disinterested attitude from the entire ensemble. Samson & Delilah is sterile, and the following Scarlet>Fire is downright boring...each song has far more than its excusable share of timing screwups, flat notes, and hideous vocals. Mercifully the band spares us an encore."

First Set. The problem is the overactive rhythm section playing separately from the rest and way uptempo. Is there a faster Sugaree (don't judge until you repitch at -2%)? The one time they collude is for Minglewood ("T right here in Montego"). I actually think this is a great version - with the right source/EQ/pitch making the difference! Loser is also good - a couple flubs, hoarse, but Jer takes a second measure in the solo and just flies. Of course they play Dewimmina because: Jamaica ("D'jah mak'er?" - "No, she wanted to go"). But it's drummer soup - Billy and Mickey are NOT at the same show as each other OR the front line. The rest trainwrecks.

Second Set. Actually starts average with Samson ("Couldn't believe his mind") but then they can't find each other on Scarlet. Throwing Stones trainwrecks hard ("Waltz with the stars, the celestial balls"), they fall apart, and now you have a comparison.

1st Set:  C-
2nd Set: D+
Overall = 1 & 1/2 Stars

Highlights:
New Minglewood Blues - Bobby isn't hot maybe, but Jer is on fire - right in the middle of a bad show. This and a decent Loser and Not Fade Away make it a little better than a one-star show. Barely.

SOURCES: Part of the problem of this show has always been bad sources. All have buzzing but the friedlai is the worst. It runs too fast, has additional surface noise/dropouts, the channels are reversed, yet it has the best image (life is yin-yan!). The Clugston runs slightly slow. The streeter source doesn't have the buzz, and has the dropouts and channel problems fixed. It does, however, run too fast (needs -2% pitch). Apparently the other sources are actually the local FM-broadcast but the streeter.21065 is best, once repitched (and until Charlie Miller remasters the show like he did so wonderfully with the streeter source for the Clash sets). If this is a 5-star show (and one of the best shows they ever played), please share your example of a 2 or 3-star show.

There is partial footage of this show within a documentary.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hatSfBrNHDM

The Dead are on at 3:00

Sounds like a fine show to me, more so because of the beautiful setting. You can really hear the boys get loose and groovy, esp. the druming on fire. Wonder they didn't play more reggae tunes, the most was Bobby's 'Book of Rules' the next day. Must have been a joy for Jerry to be there, JGB covered some fricken amazing versions of Jimmy Cliff's 'The Harder they Come'. He poured so much of his heart and soul into this music, maybe thats why he fell so hard after this year too..

super recording- The song that started it all for me, a friend played this Fire On the Mountain with the steel drums and that was it, i was a Head. Killer way to get turned on to the boys for sure

11.25.82, Montego Bay, Jamaica World Music Festival. I was 13 and on vacation with my parents. I was hanging around the hotel bar with some older kids and the head cook from the hotel restaurant suggested we all hop in his jeep, ride over to the venue. Can't believe my mom said yes. Something large and pungent got passed around and we took off at 10pm. Festival grounds were all rocks and dust and had to stand mostly. Hundreds of early 80's Deadheads all around. Saw Peter Tosh, Jimmy Cliff, Gladys Knight, among others. The Dead finally took the stage around 3am, Garcia opening with Sugaree. A still young looking Weir wearing cut off jean shorts. Second set opened with Scarlet/Fire as the sun rose over the mountains behind us. I was tired as hell but hooked for life.

By the time the band came on the crowd was exhausted. I would imagine the Dead was too. I know I was. I was 17 at the time and pulled an all nighter. You could easily walk right upfront of the stage, just feet away from the band as they played. How amazing as the band played on while the sun rose behind the stage. MTV had a full section of video cameras and microphones, yet I never found any professional videos or recordings from the show. I was there for a family vacation. Lucky me. The band (and many others) stayed at our hotel. I got to meet Jerry, Bobby, Phil, and many others just wondering through the hotel. It was a total trip!

Does anyone know if there is video footage of this show available? Video exists for many of the other performers for Sunsplash 82. Dying to see the video of this. Great show.

"Sugaree" smokes, Brent's hammond playin throughout this show is tremendous! Garcia's vocal is quite nice as well. The band is pretty tight across the board, yes even Phil. With the Dead what more can you ask for. I really like this show, one of my all times favs. If you wanna diss some shows, check most of 83' & 84'. Plenty there to bash.

There is absolutely no denying that the sun rising in Jamaica while the Dead are jamming out to Fire on the Mountain is a very cool concept.

However, this show rocks more than on just a conceptual level. There is some seriously awesome jamming going on here. Great Scarlet/Fire and second set in general, but also a rock-solid first set filled with some amazing songs and jams. This is just a great show in general. Yeah, it's not the longest show from this era, but it also packs a tremendous punch. Definately one of my favorites of all time and on a shortlist of the best pre-coma Brent shows I've heard.

Not much to say. Decent Black Peter. Nothing else special, but nothing all that bad.

Sounds like they realized after the first song or two that they needed to just kick back and not sound so reggaeish or something. Wish I could have been there. The boys sound quite on throughough this evening.....hmmm dont hear the crowd ragin.....

I WAS THERE I REMBER A LITTLE OF THIS AND THAT WAS ONE THE THE 500 HEADS THAT MORN

I am a freshman to the live music archive site.My friend recently told me about it and now I'm hooked. I love the stories and reviews but most of all I love the first handers. I sure do miss Mr.Garcia.Rat dog and phil and friends just aint the same. Does anyone know how I can record or rip a stream for an Mac OSX? I have tried itunes and VLC media player but so far no luck.Email me at dawgrose@aol.com.Thanks and keep on truckin.

,so it was shocking to me to read in the Grateful Dead tapers Compendium where it has a spot that says ;highlights:not a note ....HMMMMM. Well I still like it and think theres lots of great notes played here !

I like it!!

This was my favorite place that i ever saw a Dead show in my Dead career From 1979-1993.Montego Bay Jamaica. The show started very late with many performers. Gladys Nite had ended her set early "crying" because of all the Heads camped out sleeping waiting for The Dead. The next Band was the Clash . I remember Joe Strummer yelling to the sleeping crowd of Heads "Get The F*# Up you S$%$ B%#^& were gonna rock this place! I actually have this Recording of the Clash. Anyway the dead came on very late. I remember Just before The "Fire on the mountain" at sunrise Jerry turning to look back at the now rising sun over the hills of Montego Bay , you could see the sun burning over the mountains just as my skin had the previous day on the Jared Park Beach Camp grounds, this was Garcias que to break into the song. The Band goes into "Fire on The Mountain" while the sun is rising. This was my best "Fire" I ever witnessed. "Black Peter" was also a highlight for me as well. This was more of a festival show than a full length dead show. Any video please reply.

this is not a bad show, a smokin fire and samson are highlights with brent rippin it

Gotta agree with the other readers extolling the virtues of this show. Dyke did a supreme disservice by panning it in the Compendium. (thanks for the correction; sorry for the improper dissing, Forshay).

If the glorious opening notes to Fire don't move you, nothing will.

I've had a cassete copy of this since '84 that was dubbed using dolby B. I'd always wondered if there was a gem hidden under all that mud and indeed there was...by the way, GlamDunk is right, there is a great copy of Bobby's set over at gdlive.com where you can also get a copy of the B-52's set under the misc .shn's section....Aiko-Aiko!

The reveiwers in the Compendium said "not one note" of this show was a highlight and I wonder....?

I have this one on dat as well and always liked it.

It has an unique funk, phil is having lots of fun in this one and steps out in the mix.


robert

I went to Jamaica for the festival. For me the highlight of this show happened before the set started. After The Wailers, Toots & the Maytals, The B52's, Gladys Knight and the Pips, and Jimmy Cliff it took the road crew about an hour and a half (from 3:00 to 4:30 am) to set up the monster.

Phil came out to tune up and the rastas next to me were yelling "Cmon mon, play mon. Who is this band that takes so long to setup and play?" Phils reply was "Whats the matter? You never saw the sunrise before" The guy on the other side of me yells "Yeah Phil, I want to see the sun rise Dark Star into Unbroken Chain" That was fun! Later as the sun rose during Stella Blue someone yelled "Play all day" Lots of shows I have heard people yell play all night but play all day was a first.

No encore and a 6 song first set were limitations to this show. I like it better on tape than I did live but this was one of the weakest 82 shows I saw.

Anyone have any video from this festival. It was filmed.

For the record Bryan "Dough Boy" Dyke reviewed this show and shredded it.

Bobby and the Midnites lead-off the proceedings the next day at noon..

and the show was friggin' smoking..
download it from gdlive.com under the bob weir section..

(rock of the ages notwithstanding...sorry bobby cochrane)

I can't think of a more underrated show from this era than this one. Perhaps it's the high gen cassettes that have circulated since the early 80s. Hopefully this pristine sbd source will change a few minds. I know the boys played at the ungodly hour of 5 am(?) and it's a short, compact show but to these ears, everything is played well and, surprisingly, with energy. Well worth the 2 disc download!

This show as part of a 3 day festival that included an incongruous line-up. The dead seemed out of place. The venue, the (then brand new) Preforming Arts Center, was nothing more than a field full of big rocks. It was a very poorly run festival. Everything started late. The Dead were the last band to play that night. By the time they came on only the hardcore fans were they; maybe 500 people. The Dawn came during the Scarlet/Fire transistion. It was very beautiful. The show was short and sweet. Note Mickey and Bill's drum during Fire; intense. Thanks for the memeories.